A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

Tag: aca

I have written about the special (and illegal) Obamacare exemption the president has granted Congress.

It turns out, this exemption polls poorly. Opposition is north of 90 percent, unites Obamacare opponents and supporters, and has the potential to oust incumbents members of Congress who accept an special exemption that other Americans don’t get.

You might think that Republican and Democratic party committees would be salivating at the prospect of using this issue to oust incumbents of the other party. At a minimum, you would think that Obamacare opponents (i.e., Republicans) would drive a wedge between the law’s supporters (i.e., Democrats) and the public by forcing supporters to vote on a measure eliminating the exemption. Doing so could elect more new Republicans in 2014 by allowing them attack incumbent Democrats thus: “My opponent voted for Obamacare, and then voted to give himself and his well-paid friends in Congress a special exemption that the people of this state/district don’t get. That’s just wrong.”

Yet it appears the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have negotiated a truce on this issue. If true, both parties have agreed not to give voice to the will of the people by attacking members of the other party who consent to this special privilege granted to members of Congress. If true, it would confirm what I have written previously: “America has a two-party system. But it’s not Republicans versus Democrats. It’s the ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — against everyone else.”

I can hardly imagine a more powerful argument for allowing unlimited spending by independent groups to advocate the election or defeat of political candidates. That is, I can hardly imagine a more powerful argument against “campaign finance reform.”

On Monday, The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn admitted that President Obama “made a misleading statement about Obamacare rates” during his press conference on Friday. The magazine’s Twitter feed (@tnr) announced:

Whoops! The president (accidentally, we think) told a little #Obamacare lie on Friday.

During his press conference, the president said:

[When it comes to people without access to employer-sponsored coverage,] they’re going to be able to go on a website or call up a call center and sign up for affordable quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market. And if even with lower premiums they still can’t afford it, we’re going to be able to provide them with a tax credit to help them buy it. [Emphasis added.]

The problem, Cohn writes, is that:

while some people will pay less than they pay today, some will pay more. They will primarily be young, healthy men who benefited from preferential pricing in the past, were content with coverage that had huge gaps, and are too wealthy to qualify for the law’s tax credits—which are substantial but phase out at higher incomes…

But somebody listening to Obama’s press conference probably wouldn’t grasp that distinction. They’d come away thinking their insurance will be cheaper next year. For some, it won’t be. Obama isn’t doing himself, or the law, any favors by fostering a false expectation.

“I didn’t simply choose to delay this on my own,” President Obama reassured the nation about his unilateral decision to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate. “This was in consultation with businesses all across the country,” he said, as if that made the situation better instead of worse. Obama threw his “consultants” another bone when he decided to delay the reporting requirements the law imposes on employers, also until 2015. The president’s generosity toward large corporations will be financed by the American taxpayer. The Congressional Budget Office projects these delays will cost taxpayers another $3 billion in new government spending and reduce federal revenues by $9 billion, for a total increase in the federal debt of $12 billion. Yet the president fails to show the same concern for individual taxpayers. When the House of Representatives, including dozens of Democrats, voted to extend the same break to individuals by delaying Obamacare’s individual mandate by one year, President Obama threatened to veto that bill. Bizarrely, he also threatened to veto another bill (approved by an even broader bipartisan majority) that would make legal his illegal delay of the employer mandate.

So perhaps we should not be too surprised now that the New York Timesreveals yet another delay the president approved at the behest of big business:

In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care.

The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. But under a little-noticed ruling, federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers, allowing them to set higher limits, or no limit at all on some costs, in 2014…

[F]ederal officials said that many insurers and employers needed more time to comply because they used separate companies to help administer major medical coverage and drug benefits, with separate limits on out-of-pocket costs…

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said: “We knew this was an important issue. We had to balance the interests of consumers with the concerns of health plan sponsors and carriers, which told us that their computer systems were not set up to aggregate all of a person’s out-of-pocket costs. They asked for more time to comply.”…

Theodore M. Thompson, a vice president of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, said: “The promise of out-of-pocket limits was one of the main reasons we supported health care reform. So we are disappointed that some plans will be allowed to have multiple out-of-pocket limits in 2014.”

It is a sign of Obamacare’s complexity that the Obama administration felt it needed to issue this delay. It is a further sign of the law’s complexity that this delay was announced in February, yet is only coming to light now.

Think the Supreme Court has settled the question of ObamaCare’s legality? Not if Cannon has anything to say about it. Cannon is a tireless advocate for the argument that the IRS has illegally implemented the healthcare law’s insurance subsidies, which will help low-income households cover the cost of their premiums.

His argument is that healthcare law, as written, does not allow for the subsidies to be used in healthcare marketplaces that are set up by the federal government.

He helped the state of Oklahoma file a lawsuit against the subsidies, and a group of small businesses filed a separate suit on the same grounds, in case Cannon’s runs into procedural roadblocks.

If the lawsuits Cannon has spearheaded are successful, they could have a devastating impact on the healthcare law. A final decision in favor would stop the flow of tax subsidies to people in more than half of the states, making ObamaCare far less attractive to consumers and stripping away much of the law’s promise of affordability.

Corrections and amplifications. The argument is as much Jonathan Adler’s as mine; we develop it together in this law-journal article. The argument is not that the IRS is illegally implementing otherwise lawful subsidies; it is that the IRS is trying to dispense some $700 billion in illegal subsidies that Congress expressly did not authorize, and impose illegal taxes on millions of employers and individual Americans starting in 2014; that the Obama administration is attempting to tax, borrow, and spend nearly $1 trillion without congressional authorization. Finally, I am neither a party nor counsel nor financier to either Pruitt v. Sebelius or Halbig v. Sebelius.

In broad daylight, the Internal Revenue Service is attempting to tax, borrow, and spend [roughly] $800 billion—contrary to both the express language of the PPACA and congressional intent. Thus in addition to other abuses that have recently come to light, the IRS is attempting to tax millions of employers and individuals without congressional authorization…

In this still-unfolding narrative, the Obama administration’s actions are triply anti-democratic. First, the IRS is violating a direct constraint that popularly elected legislators placed on the executive branch. Second, it is violating that duly enacted statute for the purpose of denying popularly elected state officials the vetoes Congress gave them over certain provisions of the statute. And third, it is violating the statute because administration officials either cannot fathom or will not accept that Congress meant to do what it clearly did.

Obama administration officials continually emphasize that the PPACA is “the law of the land.” That remains to be seen, in more ways than one.

The Congressional Budget Office has released its cost estimate of the Obama administration’s one-year repeal delay of ObamaCare’s employer mandate and anti-fraud provisions. The CBO expects the Obama administration’s unilateral rewriting of federal law (my words, not CBO’s) will increase federal spending by $3 billion in 2014 and reduce federal revenues by a net $9 billion, thereby increasing the federal debt by $12 billion. If President Obama keeps this up, Congress may have to raise the debt ceiling or something.

Where is that $3 billion of new spending going? The CBO estimates the administration’s action will lead to about half a million additional people receiving government subsidies, including through ObamaCare’s Exchanges:

All told, as a result of the announced changes and new final rules, roughly 1 million fewer people are expected to be enrolled in employment-based coverage in 2014 than the number projected in CBO’s May 2013 baseline, primarily because of the one-year delay in penalties on employers. Of those who would otherwise have obtained employment-based coverage, roughly half will be uninsured and the others will obtain coverage through the exchanges or will enroll in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), CBO and JCT estimate.